Niko-niko Calendar

Definition

The team installs a calendar one one of the room's walls. The format of the calendar allows each team member to record, at the end of every workday, a graphic evaluation of their mood during that day. This can be either a hand-drawn "emoticon", or a colored sticker, following a simple color code, for instance: blue for a bad day, red for neutral, yellow for a good day.

Over time, the niko-niko calendar reveals patterns of change in the moods of the team, or of individual members.

Also Known As

The Japanese word "niko" means "smile"; following a common pattern of word doubling in Japanese, "niko-niko" has a meaning closer to "smiley".

Expected Benefits

The value of this practice lies in making somewhat objective an important element of team performance - motivation or well-being - which is generally seen as entirely subjective and thus impossible to measure and track.

This may be seen as an illustration of the Gilb Measurability Principle: "anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is superior to not measuring it at all."

In other words, a measurement does not have to be perfect or even very precise, as long as your intent is to get a quantitative handle on something that was previously purely qualitative; the important thing is to take that first step toward quantifying.

Common Pitfalls

As with other activities, such as retrospectives, where team members are asked to report subjective feelings, self-censorship is always a risk. This could be the case, for instance, if team members who report poor days are blamed for "whining", by management or by team mates.

Origins

2001: among the visualizations described in Norm Kerth's "Project Retrospectives", the "Energy Seismograph" can perhaps be seen as a forerunner of the niko-niko calendar

2006: niko-niko calendars are first described by Akinori Sakata in this Web article